


Things Dementors Don't Like

by Magnificent_Beast



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Dementors, Drama, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-03
Updated: 2020-05-03
Packaged: 2021-03-01 18:07:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23991274
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Magnificent_Beast/pseuds/Magnificent_Beast
Summary: Thirteen years after the end of the war, the Ministry is still using dementors to guard its prison, in spite of the efforts of the old Trio to put an end to the policy. That's bad news for Lucius Malfoy, who reacts imprudently to that Muggle-born upstart Granger liberating his house-elf. But humans, imperfect though they are, are not such easy prey as dementors might wish. Sequel to A Werewolf is a Human Being (contains spoilers), AU compared with postwar canon.
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Original Male Character(s), Hermione Granger/Ron Weasley, Lucius Malfoy/Narcissa Black Malfoy





	Things Dementors Don't Like

Lucius Malfoy must have been losing his marbles, and who could blame him? For the second time in his life, a house-elf had been liberated from his service, only this time the catastrophe was greater, for he would not be able to buy another one. It had been over four years since the almost unthinkable passage of the House-elf Emancipation Act, spearheaded by Hermione Granger, who was now the head of the Beings Division at the Ministry's Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures. There had been a time when most wizards had thought Granger's ideas about house-elves were a joke, and hardly anyone really expected the Act to accomplish much. But something even more unthinkable was happening in that it was looking as if it might possibly work.

The Act prohibited the buying and selling of house-elves and required their masters to pay them wages. If the elves would not accept the wages, which they usually did not, the money went into a transitional fund that would provide grants to elves wishing to start their own business enterprises or pay for schooling. Though most elves had remained loyal to the families of their masters, there were a few who had become free upon the death of the last surviving member of such a family, many of these families having taken a hit during the war. There were even a few who had taken the socks, and Malfoy had just had the shock of finding that his own elf Oojah, whom his wife had purchased after the war, had been one of them. It was appearing that the psychological condition of servitude most wizards had considered to be an innate feature of these creatures was in fact something learned as they grew up, and that elves who had in all other respects internalized the wishes of their masters were capable of wanting something different for their children. Elves having children were giving them up for adoption by the few free ones or sending them out to families that would pay them wages and not treat them like slaves, so many of the new generation would consider themselves paid laborers, not being conditioned otherwise, and the ranks of the free ones were already growing.

He knew he could not buy another one, or even pay another one to work for him, for he could no longer help seeing the fact that his household was the last place any house-elf would want to work. Dobby had been free to bad-mouth the Malfoys for years, and his murder by Bellatrix was legendary. Since the demise of the Black family, the Malfoy household was rightly seen as the truest remaining bastion of pure-blood supremacy and suspected of being a place where lesser beings might be kept in line with Dark Magic. No one would believe he would ever pay wages. Oojah's unusual betrayal, despite his never having mistreated the elf, was already being whispered about as evidence that the Malfoys had not changed.

What would they do without help? Would poor Narcissa have to cart around groceries and wait in queues with witches and wizards of every birth and station? Would she have to learn to cook at her age? Would they set to cleaning their own stately mansion? Other wizards of their class, who still had their elves, would look down on them. The place would become so dusty that their former friends would avoid them. The natural social order was being turned on its head. He could not even hire a witch or wizard as a servant, as shameful as that would be, because witches and wizards did not do such work, since it had always been done by house-elves. He would no longer be able to offer his wife the things he had used to recommend himself to her from the time of their courtship: the continued dignity of a high social position and all the ease and comfort that came with great wealth. He had known then, and still believed, that he would have been a poor suitor if he had offered the beautiful and aristocratic Narcissa Black any less. Would she still love him, would she still have reason to love him, if their standard of living was to collapse?

And whom did he have to thank most for this state of affairs? He remembered when Hermione Granger had been nothing but that know-it-all little Mudblood girl who used to beat his son at every subject at school. He had not been able to believe it as he had watched her meteoric rise at the Ministry, her success in implementing each policy more outrageous than the last, and now that she wielded real power, and he wielded none, he loathed her more than anyone in the world.

Well, maybe there was another arrogant Muggle-born upstart he hated as much. That werewolf-loving Healer Steve Gillyfeld, who had helped Granger get the Werewolf Anti-Discrimination Act passed, had an unbroken record of thwarting him. Before the war, when Malfoy had been a great philanthropist and his gold had bought him influence at the Ministry, Gillyfeld had argued with St. Mungo's administration that Malfoy should not be able to make any restrictions on how his donations to the hospital should be used. He had wanted to force Malfoy to help pay for the Wolfsbane Potion and had even argued that the hospital should admit Muggles. Malfoy had not been able to get the Ministry to take any action against him, though they knew of his repeated violations of the Wizarding Statute of Secrecy.

During the war Gillyfeld had gone into hiding, but it could hardly even be called that, because as a fugitive he had gone around healing every sick or injured person who crossed his path. Since he could not resist a call for medical help, he should have been very easy to catch, and Malfoy had ordered the man brought to his manor for interrogation, planning to put an end to him. But somehow he was not brought to Malfoy and was found quite sane in Azkaban at the end of the war, and he was now the Healer-in-Charge of Potion and Plant Poisoning at the hospital. There had been something about his conceited lack of caution for his own safety or for anyone else's good opinion that made it feel like all the more of an insult to Malfoy that the knave had always defeated or eluded his power. Though the war was long over, some part of him felt as if capturing Gillyfeld were unfinished business.

The Dark Lord had been a cruel and egomaniacal leader, taking no care of his followers and too willing to sacrifice them, but the Death Eaters had been right about about the threat that Muggle-borns posed to wizarding society...they were destroying the social order...Malfoy wished there was yet some power to suck the soul out of this Mudblood takeover of the Wizarding World...was there? A wild idea started to form in his imagination, bred by his growing despair about his own future...the dementors were still guarding Azkaban, but with decreasing attachment, as the number of prisoners there had been declining...suppose Granger just happened to be out in some lonely place when a group of dementors came drifting her way...he doubted whether a single girl could drive away an unexpected pack of dementors...

What might lure Granger to an isolated place? Malfoy had a thought that almost made him laugh. Hadn't there been something between her and Gillyfeld at some point? He didn't think it had lasted long. They were never seen together, hadn't been for years, and Gillyfeld had long since taken up with that crazy slut Barbary. Granger had stayed single, though everyone had expected her to marry the Weasley boy, because she was so busy with her project of overhauling wizarding society...there was no limit to her fanatical ambition...

Supposing they were lured to the same lonely place, and dementors just happened to drift that way? Supposing they received notes from each other suggesting a tryst? Was that the type of thing they would do? Possibly not, with their loud mouths and high principles, and they would know each other's writing...but their dedication to their work would lure either of them anywhere. He had another thought the poetic justice of which appealed to him. He would finally capture Gillyfeld in the manner his underlings had promised to capture him during the war, and as for Granger, he would defeat her in her last act of trying to liberate a house-elf.

Would the two of them fend off an unexpected pack of dementors? There was a good chance they wouldn't. That clown Gillyfeld would try to heal dementors if he had the chance. They would be so busy looking for whoever had called them for help, or better yet, so distracted by whatever drama would come from their seeing each other again, that they might not be on their guard until it was too late.

Lucius Malfoy must have been losing his marbles to contemplate such a crime, from which he could probably gain nothing and possibly lose everything, but his marbles had taken a hit during the five-year term in Azkaban he had served after the war, and since then he had already gotten away with something like murder. Of course that old pest Arthur Weasley had suspected him and his cohorts of having something to do with the werewolf attack that had almost brought down Granger and her Werewolf Act six years earlier, but who would listen to Weasley? Malfoy had cared about the Werewolf Act most because of what it signaled about what was to come, the catastrophe that was now upon him. He would not call a meeting of his cohorts this time. Their circle had drifted apart, and many of them still had their house-elves and would move along with the times and pay the wages. This time he would act alone.

***

Dusk was falling on the magically hidden meadow area north of London that witches and wizards had nicknamed "The Witches' Heath" after a heath in Scotland that had been the haunt of some Medieval witches who were later vilified by Muggles for their supposed interference in Scottish politics. The house-elf had asked Hermione to meet her by the ash copse, and Hermione had arrived and was looking around, first under the trees and then out at the meadow. She saw a figure approaching her, but she could see even from a distance that it was not a house-elf but a full-sized person, probably a man. The air was misty, almost foggy, and she did not recognize him until he was quite near.

"Steve?" she said in surprise.

"Hermione?" he said, just as surprised.

"Have you seen a house-elf?" she said. "I got a note from a house-elf saying she wanted to talk to me here where she could be sure her master would not find her out."

"No," said Gillyfeld. "Have you seen a man who looks like he has plant poisoning? My buzzer directed me to this location."

They looked at each other questioningly.

"Can I see your note?" said Gillyfeld. 

Hermione handed him the piece of parchment and drew her wand. " _Lumos!_ " she said, and held the light so he could read it. He returned it to her.

"It looks like some kind of setup," she said. "But who would do it and why? I smell trouble. I suggest we get out of here fast." She knew him well enough to know that he was not the one messing with her. But she saw hesitation in his face, recalling to her something else she knew about him, something that both warmed and chilled her heart.

"You go, then," he said. "Disapparate. I won't hang around for long, but I need to be sure my patient isn't here."

Now she hesitated herself to leave him alone. He had always had this innocent streak. A chilly wind blew and they both shivered. He had, as was his habit, only thrown a Muggle jacket over his Healer's uniform, and she had not worn her winter cloak, as summer was barely over. The night was becoming colder, too cold too fast, and darker, too dark…she looked up and could see no stars, and then at the horizon, where she saw something approaching that struck terror in her...she had not seen them since she was a teenager…she glanced at Gillyfeld and saw that he also looked terrified. She was surprised that he did not make a move, and then remembered that he was an Azkaban survivor, and remembered how Sirius had reacted when he had been surrounded by dementors...she'd better make a move herself, and fast. She still had her wand out. She remembered how Harry had surprised himself and all of them that night, and thinking of Harry, she tried concentrating on the memory of his miraculous reappearance in the last battle with Voldemort, after they had thought he was dead...

" _Expecto Patronum!_ " she said, and a silvery wisp came out of her wand that was almost, but not quite, an otter. _Why, why had she always had so much trouble with this charm?_

The deadly, paralyzing chill tightened its grip on her as the evil shapes closed in...she knew this had been a setup by someone who still wanted them both out of the way...the darkness was so thick she could no longer see him...she was fighting them for the memory that she loved him, loved Ron, loved Harry and Ginny and their children, loved the family she no longer... another mouth reached hers and she knew it was all over, but only for an instant, for to her surprise the mouth was warm and solid and somehow familiar, and she realized it was not a dementor but Gillyfeld who was kissing her. Her first feeling was relief, but this was followed by a confused jumble of feelings including indignation at his presumption, the realization that she still wanted him and hoped that he might feel the same, and the recollection that he had a partner, and then it occurred to her that as long as he kept this up dementors could not kiss either of them, and that that was probably the reason he was doing it. She was a little chagrined to think that this behavior was not necessarily an indication of love or even desire on his part, and that she herself had been unable to come up with a solution. It had always been Harry who had saved them from dementors...

"Don't you have any happy memories?" he spoke in her ear, and quickly resumed the activity.

"Don't _you_?" she said with a similar interruption.

"I haven’t been able to make a Patronus since the war.”

So his problem was as she had suspected, damage from extreme past exposure. She gripped her wand and returned his kiss with a new intention, trying to forget everything except the happy night she had once spent with him, pretending she was there and it was then, but by the time she said " _Expecto Patronum!_ " the memory of the heartache that had followed had caught up with her, and all that came from her wand was a silvery wisp. His lips met hers again but she felt little except that the dementors were going to get her anyway.

"You can do it," he said. "We can’t afford to lose you!"

These last words startled her and set off a new train of recollections in her mind: of the confidence his own confidence had once helped to inspire in her, of her powerful position at the Ministry, of her own leadership in bringing about change they both believed in...and she fixed on a memory of something more recent, the Wizengamot voting to approve the measure that would effectively end house-elf slavery...

" _Expecto Patronum!_ " she said again, and this time a bright silver otter flew from the tip of her wand and, rolling about playfully in the manner of otters, nudged at the dementors with its nose and swatted at them with its tail. This treatment seemed even more deadly to them than the prongs of a stag, seeing how quickly they drifted away and evaporated.

Gillyfeld collapsed against a tree and shook with quiet laughter. She was unsure whether this was a sign of nervous exhaustion or whether he really thought the situation was funny. Remembering the inequality there had always been in their feelings for each other, she felt a momentary urge to kick him. But he was looking at her fondly.

"Forgive me,” he said, “and thank you for saving my life.”

"Thank you for saving mine. Are you alright?"

"Yes, but I need some chocolate and so do you. Would you like to come back to the hospital with me?"

"I need to report this to the Ministry as soon as possible. Can I have your buzzer for forensics? If you're going straight back to the hospital you can get another one." He handed her a small rectangular copper object. "We better get out of here before we get attacked again. Nice seeing you, Steve." She was about to Disapparate, but he stepped forward and offered her a hug, which she accepted, and there was no mistaking its expression of caring.

"Don't forget the chocolate," he urged. "You forget everything but your work."

"So do you," she said, feeling better. "Be safe."

"You too."

She Disapparated with a dull crack of the misty air, and a moment later he did the same, and only the night beasts of the Heath witnessed the fact that the dementors did not return.

***

Hermione reported the incident to the night staff of Magical Law Enforcement, who lost no time in getting on the case, since the last thing they wanted was for their dementors to get out of control, or for anyone to think they were, which would spread panic. They found that a member of the staff who had been responsible for monitoring the dementors that evening was acting oddly and had a few hours' gap in his memory, and it looked as if he might have been under the Imperious Curse. The Ministry hoped to solve the case while keeping the matter a secret, but they did put out a bulletin that they had reason to believe a wizard had used an Unforgivable Curse that evening and asked anyone to come forward who might have seen evidence of suspicious activity.

To their surprise a werewolf came forward the following day and told them, on condition of anonymity, that werewolves had seen evidence that the werewolf who had attacked Ministry employees six years earlier had been paid off by a wealthy wizard, and that there had been anti-government propaganda spread among them at the time that made some of them suspect former Death Eaters. The werewolves had kept quiet at the time because they had a code of protecting each other from law enforcement, given their history of supporting themselves through illegal activities, but this werewolf had seen the dementors and felt he should finally speak up, in case the same people were behind it, considering who the intended victim was. This confirmed what Arthur Weasley, who had been observing former Voldemort supporters congregating at the Malfoy Manor, had suspected at the time, but most people at the Ministry had not taken the idea seriously. Arthur was now retired, but it was decided to consult his list of Malfoy's associates and bring them in for questioning.

Gillyfeld's emergency buzzer was examined by the Forensics Division, which was now taking advantage of recent breakthroughs in the uses of Veritaserum. It had been found that if a magical device had lies stored in its memory, the application of Veritaserum to the device could cause it to reveal what would have been in its memory if the person who had given it the information had been honest. Emergency buzzers, one of a number of new magical communications devices that had proliferated in recent years, were carried by Healers and law enforcement workers and showed the geographical location of a person calling for help, but they were not completely secure against malicious hexes that could cause them to display a false location. Gillyfeld's buzzer’s most recent call showed coordinates inside of the Witches' Heath north of London, but the application of Veritaserum caused it to reveal the coordinates of a location on the grounds of the Malfoy Manor. Ministry workers still found it difficult to believe that Lucius Malfoy, even if he were to commit such a wild and heinous crime, would leave behind such a damning piece of circumstantial evidence, but many who knew the wizard had long been observing that his mental capacity was not what it had once been and perhaps was getting worse. That morning the Ministry sent out some of its best Aurors to arrest him.

The Auror who broke through the front gate and went to the front door of the mansion got no answer, since Malfoy had left through another door and was walking toward a wooded area on the north side of his estate, holding his wand beneath his cloak. As he neared the woods, another Auror shouted at him to stop, and Malfoy's face first registered indignation but then disdain when he noticed the intruder's red hair and the family resemblance in his face.

"A Weasley," he said.

"Yes," said Ron significantly, "a Weasley. You're wanted by Magical Law Enforcement. Put your hands where I can see them."

Malfoy was just digesting the fact that what he was facing was not some poor thing he had always associated with that name, but a strong, confident young wizard who was as tall as he was and a trained Auror, when Ron, seeing his hand still beneath his cloak, aimed a stunning spell at him that he just managed to parry.

"Will you come quietly, Lucius?" said Ron coldly, "or do you wish to die?"

Malfoy was taken aback both at the melodrama of these words and the fact that the Weasley boy had called him by his first name. He was seized by the increasing outrage he kept feeling over his continuing loss of status as a wealthy aristocrat. " _Crucio!_ " he said, but Ron parried the curse neatly, and his face showed neither shock nor distress.

"For the last time," said Ron, "do you prefer to die fighting, or to go to trial again? I'd choose the second one if I were you. You've got a gift for getting away with murder. They should have locked you up after the First War and thrown away the key."

Malfoy tried to summon the will to cast the killing curse but did not have it in him. If he killed the Weasley his guilt would be evident, and where would he go? There was something in the young man's words after all. He had his wife and son to think of. And yet this Weasley was evincing such hatred toward him that he thought that if he surrendered, the boy might kill him anyway. Why was it so personal? But of course, the Weasley boy and the Granger girl had been lovers, and he now was rightly suspected of unleashing dementors on her...

"This is all a mistake," he said, with a trace of his old smoothness. He wished he could remember the Weasley's name, but he could never keep straight the names of Arthur's innumerable children. "My family quit the service of the Dark Lord even before his defeat, to protect each other from his boundless cruelty. I have already been tried and punished for my service to him. Some of my former enemies have been looking for evidence of conspiracies where there are none. With fewer prisoners in Azkaban, dementors have lost their prey, and it is hardly a surprise if some leave to look for more. What sensible person would suspect my involvement now?"

"Your vileness has been the one constant through all your changes in loyalty, _Malfoy_ ," said Ron, with a peculiar emphasis on the name. "Have you forgotten what you did to my sister?"

Malfoy racked his aging memory. What had he done to the Weasley girl? Then he remembered the diary. What could he say about that? In his moment of hesitation Ron spoke again.

" _Expelliarmus!_ " Malfoy's wand flew into Ron's left hand. " _Incarcerous!_ " Malfoy was bound with ropes, the greatest indignity he had suffered at the hands of anyone but the Dark Lord, for without a wand, such a vulgar ploy was enough to render him completely helpless.

***

For the third time in his life, Lucius Malfoy sat in a prison cell in Azkaban, only this time he knew it was all over. He kept thinking of the mass of Muggle-born witches and wizards who had occupied these cells during the short time of Death Eater rule. The dementors were filling his mind with images of them working in the Ministry, sitting in the Wizengamot, running the government and making laws to destroy the Wizarding World as he had once known it, making not only themselves but werewolves and house-elves the equal of pure-blood wizards. He must not have far to go to lose his sanity, for these things had already been driving him mad on the outside without the help of dementors.

A couple of the dark shapes passed by his cell window, and an icy breeze wafted into his cell. The house-elves seemed to be getting larger and to be leering at him, especially Dobby and Oojah, who had always hated serving him, and had been looking forward to this moment all their lives, the moment when their reverend pure-blood master would be tossed away for life by the Mudbloods and their lackeys into the hole where the those Mudblood magic-thieves more properly belonged. He saw a party of these bloated house-elves feasting at his table, eating his fancy food with their fingers and vulgarly gnawing on bones while an exhausted-looking Narcissa, who was serving them, hurried to the kitchen to get them more. Poor Narcissa...

Poor Narcissa indeed. They would never see each other again. He remembered her cry of anguish when the sentence was read, life in Azkaban with the possibility of parole after twenty years of good behavior, the last part sounding like cruel bit of mockery. Their separation was his own fault, the fruit of his own reckless and vindictive behavior. For a moment he felt his mind becoming clearer and more rational again. But if he thought he belonged here, the dementors had won, and their conquest of his mind would be all the easier for his guilt and despair. He did not belong here, but with his family. She loved him and already missed him. Or did she love him? He could viscerally feel the dementors trying to suck the thought out of him.

He had brought them to grief, perhaps was an embarrassment to them. He remembered how dispassionately Draco had looked at him during the trial, as if he couldn't have cared less, and how he had only showed any emotion when his mother broke down and he had tried to comfort her. That he had become an embarrassment to Draco was something he could have seen, if he had been less preoccupied, from the time six years earlier when he and his friends had tried instigating werewolf attacks in the hope of bringing down Granger's career. The boy had only kept his mouth shut because he wanted his father's gold. Now the mother who doted on him had control of it, and he was probably glad his unpredictable father was out of the way for whatever life he had left.

This was the thought that bit him more cruelly than the revenge of Muggle-borns or house-elves. Selfish as he might be in relation to anyone but his family, he had loved his wife and his son more than his gold, than power, or than the hope for immortality the Dark Lord had once offered him. His son wanted his fortune but did not want him. He loved the son who did not love him. The dementors were wrenching the memory of Narcissa's love away from him, but would they not leave him with such an unhappy thought? They would ride in on his despair and soon destroy what was left of his sanity. Yet he sensed they could not take advantage of this thought, _I loved the son who did not love me_ , because it was unselfish. He did not regret loving his son, only having disappointed him, and with this thought the dementors wanted nothing. He would hold this thought and keep his reason forever.

***

Harry, Ron and Hermione had occasional reunions, usually in the vicinity of Hogsmeade, for old time’s sake and because Harry was now the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher at Hogwarts. There had been a hiatus in these meetings while Ron was recovering from the broken heart that Hermione had left him with when she had broken off their engagement many years earlier, but he was long over that. Hermione was eager to tell them what had happened during her recent brush with dementors, and when she suggested the meeting, she also said that she had a new theory that she wanted to share with them. Harry and Ron were most interested to hear any of Hermione's new information or theories. Since she said that she wanted to meet somewhere she could be heard easily by them but not by anyone else, The Three Broomsticks was out, and as they felt that they were too old to use the Muffliato spell, Harry suggested that they meet in the cave that had once been Padfoot's hideout, which they all agreed would be a lark.

Hermione recounted how she and Gillyfeld had been lured to the Heath and what had happened when the dementors had come, and how they had succeeded in stalling them and finally in fending them off. Neither Ron nor Harry had ever met Gillyfeld, but she had told them all about him long ago. Harry seemed more pleased with the story than Ron did.

"So you made the Patronus?" he said. "Brilliant, Hermione. As far as I remember that was the only spell you ever had trouble with. Have you been practicing it?"

"No, and it took me three tries. That wouldn't have been good enough if Steve hadn't really been thinking on his feet. I mean, it was brilliant to think of kissing me, because as long as he did that the dementors couldn't kiss either of us." Ron snorted. "Did no one else ever think of that?" she continued, ignoring him. "I don't remember anyone ever suggesting it, but I can't think why not, it's such a handy defense if you're not alone when dementors come."

"But that wouldn't drive them away," said Harry. "Did Steve try to make a Patronus?"

"No, he said he hasn’t been able to do it since the war. But he kept them at bay until I was confident enough to succeed, and he encouraged me. He told me with such certainty that I could do it that I believed it, and so I did it."

"I think that would be the least he could do, if he couldn't cast the charm himself," muttered Ron testily.

"Same old Ron. I suppose you expect it's a wizard who should rescue a witch, regardless of which one has more magical skill," muttered Hermione just as testily.

"Yes, confidence is what it takes," said Harry agreeably. "That's what Remus gave me, and what I try to give my students. The night we rescued Sirius I only succeeded in making the Patronus when I already knew I had done it."

“Well, it gave me an idea,” said Hermione. “I think it may be more than just a momentary stalling tactic. We all know dementors hate joy and the things that generate it. Isn’t sex one of those things? I mean, those pleasant feelings that come up…it must be anathema to them. It seems to me this is an area of defense against dementors that has been underutilized.”

Harry was momentarily speechless from half-smothered laughter, but Ron did not look amused. He would also have been tickled to hear Hermione of all people talking this way, if he didn't know it had something to do with the way that cad Gillyfeld always jerked her chain. Wasn't he a genius to think of kissing when the person who was with him when dementors came happened to be an attractive young woman? She always characterized him as noble and idealistic, always seeing him through the distorted lens of her fancy, even though she had long ago told them that he had taken her to bed when he was in love with someone else.

“Sex is selfish,” he said morosely. “It causes as much misery as joy. For every happy couple there’s two or three broken hearts. What about unwanted pregnancies and diseases and the pain of childbirth and children whose needs aren’t met…what about men telling you lies to try to get it?” There was a note of anger in his voice as he spoke the last sentence.

Hermione looked at him in surprise. “You sound like a Muggle,” she said. “Witches don’t die in childbirth anymore, and with the education and health care our children get now, there aren’t many unwanted pregnancies, and it’s not hard to terminate them if there are. We’re even close to eliminating sexually transmitted diseases, and to meeting the needs of all our children. Most of the suffering you describe was not caused by sex but by patriarchy. It was a patriarchal society that condemned sex and made it a forbidden subject, and that punished women for pregnancy or children for being born out of wedlock. We’re on our way to a better world. I can’t think of anything that would starve dementors more than sex positivity.”

“What are you suggesting, Hermione?” said Harry through a laugh.

“Well—” She suddenly felt a bit sheepish. “When you teach dementors in Defense Against the Dark Arts class, and how to make a Patronus, have you ever thought of suggesting, if they aren’t able yet to make a Patronus in time, that kissing might be a defense?”

“You don’t have kids, or work with them either,” said Harry. “You forget what teenagers are like, or maybe you were always so mature you never really knew. It isn’t only that the subject would become a joke in my class. Some teenagers long for a sexual connection more than they care about any threat to their safety. Some of them would stage an imaginary dementor attack if they could use it to get someone they fancied to kiss them. If it happened enough times, people would expect it, and they would be off their guard if real dementors appeared. It would end up making them less safe.”

“Besides,” said Ron, “people might get carried away, and what if it didn’t stop at kissing? If people got to lovemaking, they would be totally off their guard, and the dementors could move right in and get to them afterwards before they could get to their feet and make a Patronus.”

“Do you have to be on your feet to make a Patronus?” said Hermione. “If people are feeling blissful, wouldn’t it come easily?”

Harry and Ron exchanged a look.

“OK, I’m not talking about teenagers anymore,” said Hermione hurriedly. “I understand what Harry said. But what I’m trying to say about being positive…it isn’t just a matter of momentary good feelings. The whole phenomenon of life and reproduction is so beautiful…”

Ron started and looked at her curiously.

“Remember after the war,” Hermione continued doggedly, looking at Harry, “when we tried to convince the Ministry to cut all ties with the dementors? We even thought they could be eliminated. They thought we were young and naïve and wouldn’t listen to us, but it’s many years later, we’ve done well in our careers, and I think it’s time to try again. To eliminate dementors, we need to encourage joy, and to minimize the unhappy spaces where they are able to breed. Since they are not biological, and breed through misery rather than sexual reproduction, doesn’t it follow that sexual reproduction would be anathema to them?” 

This time it was Ron who laughed. “That’s mental, Hermione. Animals breeding like animals doesn’t interfere with dementors breeding where there is misery. That sounds a bit like those prats who claim that same-sex marriage is a threat to traditional marriage, as if one interfered with the other.”

Now it was Hermione who looked at Ron curiously. One of the reasons she had left him was because she had come to believe that he was more conventional than she was and did not share her critical view of wizarding society but had only pretended to in some cases to try to please her. Particularly after meeting Gillyfeld, she had realized that there were other wizards with whom she had more in common when it came to seeing the possibility of making social change. But what he just said showed an instinct toward fairness that was clearly sincere and not intended to please her, since he was contradicting her and had no expectation of a relationship with her now. And looking at him, she could not help noticing how handsome he was, something that had drawn her in their teenage years, but he had been so immature then…now he was a man, still with a head of lovely red hair, and she believed the years had made him more handsome…

Harry interrupted her thoughts. “I’m all in, Hermione,” he said.

“What?” she said, startled.

Harry looked from her to Ron, noticing. “I mean that I think it’s time to try again to end the Ministry’s use of dementors as Azkaban guards. The Ministry was always afraid of what they would get up to if they were let go. The more weapons we have against them the better. Of course, good education in making Patroni is the most important one, and I can argue that youngsters are getting that from me more than they used to back when there was a different DADA teacher every year, and always one with some kind of problem. And as you were suggesting, increasing happiness in general tends to reduce their numbers, though I don’t know about your reproductive bit. But we could all brainstorm ideas about what might reduce their numbers.”

“Before the First War there used to be an organization called the Anti-Dementor League,” said Hermione. “They worked on strengthening their Patroni, and practiced civil disobedience, driving dementors away from Azkaban. That strategy didn’t work so well because some prisoners escaped and it turned public opinion against them. Now we have a better chance of working within the Ministry, which Ron and I both work for, to change policy. We would also need to work on public opinion, and who better for that than you, Harry? What would you say to forming the second Anti-Dementor League, and recruiting as many supporters as we can?”

“Will you recruit them with promises of lovemaking?” teased Ron. Hermione kicked at his foot, which he did not try to remove.

“How about friendship?” said Harry. “I like your idea, Hermione. I say let’s meet again soon as the Anti-Dementor League.” He took his wand from his pocket and conjured a parchment, then produced a quill. “I’d like to start by making a list,” he said, and wrote at the top of the parchment, while speaking aloud: “Things Dementors Don’t Like:” then immediately added, “joy and love.”

“Friendship,” suggested Ron.

“Confidence,” said Hermione.

“Absolutely,” said Harry. “Now Hermione, do you really think…”

Hermione anticipated more mockery. “It’s about the beauty of it all…they don’t like joy, they don’t like what is beautiful, or our enjoyment of it, and is it so far out to include biology in that?”

“OK,” said Harry, “supposing I put ‘biological processes,’ but with a question mark?”

“Good enough,” said Hermione, “but how about beauty, without a question mark?” she looked over and noticed that Ron seemed to be studying her face almost as intently as she had been studying his.

Harry looked from Hermione to Ron. “I’d best be getting back to the school, now,” he said. “Shall we meet again in a week?”

“Sounds good,” said Ron and Hermione at once.

“Cheerio,” said Harry, and looking thoughtfully from one to the other of his friends again, turned and walked out.

There was a slightly awkward pause as both Hermione and Ron looked at their feet.

“Do you need to go now too,” said Ron, “Or would you like to walk a bit? I mean it’s pretty beautiful here, with lots of biological processes that we city dwellers don’t get to enjoy as often as Harry does.”

Hermione smiled. “Love to,” she said. She followed him out of the cave in single file and down the path that led to the other side of the mountain. They stopped at a clearing with a view of the area below them, where a rock made a natural seat.

“So Hermione,” said Ron, “you like the idea of reproduction, even though you don’t think it’s for you?”

“Who said that?”

“Um, you did. When you left me. You said that you knew I wanted to have kids, and you didn’t then, and you didn’t want to get in the way of my finding someone who did. But maybe it was just that you didn’t want to have them with me…” he trailed off sadly.

“No, it was that I wanted to prioritize my career in Creatures. I was very ambitious, and for good reason. Look at how the treatment of other Beings has changed. There was the Werewolf Act, and now the end of house-elf slavery, and even the treaty with the Giants. You have to admit that I’ve made a difference.”

“Yes, you certainly have. I guess I didn’t really appreciate – not your work, I appreciated that. But that you may have sacrificed something you would have wanted for yourself in order to benefit the world.”

“Yes, it’s true,” said Hermione. “Now I would love to have kids, but I don’t know that I’ll find a partner.”

“I know someone who still loves you, who would come back, if only you wanted him. But he was never good enough…”

“Ron! It wasn’t…you have to admit you sometimes laughed at me. I thought you didn’t see things the way I did. And the way you bad-mouthed my friend Steve, who is idealistic like I am…”

“Who treated you badly. I only hated to see you get hurt. I still hate to see that.”

She looked at him with a new realization. Could that have been it? Had it been caring, and not just self-centered jealousy?

“We’re not the same people we were then,” she said. “I know a witch who is looking for love and family, who would try again with her first, if it’s not too late.”

“No,” he said, putting his arms around her, “it’s not too late. If you feel like kissing a man who won’t pretend it’s to save you from dementors.”

***

Lucius Malfoy's first ten years were almost up when the dementors were relieved of their duties as Azkaban guards and replaced with other forms of magic. At this point Ministry workers, who would hardly set foot in the place before, went from cell to cell to assess the condition of their surviving prisoners. Malfoy was found to be a gaunt, white-haired and seemingly docile old man who remembered nothing, not even his name, except for a sentence he would sometimes repeat: "I loved the son who did not love me." Along with a few other prisoners considered sick but harmless, he was granted a compassionate release to St. Mungo's hospital. 

When he opened his eyes like a newborn to the unfamiliar light, sounds and smells of the hospital, a face was peering at his with a mixture of pity and disgust. The face was somehow familiar to him: lively brown eyes, smile lines, a few remnants of what had once been dark brown hair among the grey. "Are you able to talk?" it said.

Malfoy’s mind latched onto this human face as a possible recipient for the message he still clutched inside him. "I love the son who does not love me," he said. The Healer, leaning forward, caught these words with great interest, and the face showed an active mind at work. The look of disgust had faded.

"Lucius?" said the Healer softly.

The name brought back such a torrent of memories that Malfoy was near panic. He now recognized the face leaning over him as the face of someone he had once hated. His life was in the hands of someone he had twice unsuccessfully tried to kill, and who probably knew it. His healing in the trust of someone who certainly knew that Malfoy had tried to destroy his career as a Healer. He could not turn any paler than he already was, but he gripped the side of the bed. Yet he could read neither hatred nor triumph in the face, only concern.

Another Healer beckoned to Gillyfeld from another part of the room. "Can we bring him back?" he said quietly.

"I can't, but maybe someone can," said Gillyfeld. "We'll have to keep him on the ward for now. Send for his wife and ask her to visit as soon and as often as possible." These words were spoken in the tone of a Healer-in-Charge dispensing medical orders. "I think it's more likely than not he'll be able to go home."

Malfoy caught the words "send for his wife" and felt he had been thrown a lifeline. _Narcissa was still alive_. There was only one more thing he wanted to know, and he would not know until he saw her.

Half an hour later, he saw her and he knew. She ran to his bedside and held his thin hand, and from the look in her eyes he would have known, even if she hadn't said it, which she did. _Let Draco have the Manor_ , he thought, for he had the idea that he wanted to live with this woman in a secluded cottage by the sea, where they would learn to cook for each other, maybe fish that they caught themselves, and where the sun would be too bright and the breeze too fresh and his love too continually replenished to allow for the presence of dementors. Perhaps such a setup was something his gold could yet buy.


End file.
